Kailh Switch Series,which one is your favorite?

[kailh01]

https://twitter.com/kailh01/status/1105000077028818944

[Elrick]

Kailh BOX Switches - ALWAYS, despite your early stuff up.

1) Navy

2) Jade

3) Royals.

[kailh01]

Kailh BOX Switches - ALWAYS, despite your early stuff up.

1) Navy

2) Jade

3) Royals.

you only like box switch

[St0ckz]

Box switches YIKES, sound bad and destroy your caps, the solution to which is to REBUY "fixed" box switches... can't lube them, the royals click after some use, the other tactiles are linear, half the selling point was low wobble but they wobble just as much as cherry, the only half decent thing are the click bars.

Yet not a mention of kailh creams, the best switch they've came out with in a while.. Minus the spring

[Wodan]

LOL just thinking about all these nice high end kits people have ruined with some half-baked hype switch rushed into the market with -1 QC in place.

A few more faps an I am ready for the I-told-you-so victory emote. Oh wait no I haven't unlocked that yet and it costs 2 unsavers

[Anakey]

yet at least they have actually shown innovation during their relatively short time they have been around unlike Cherry who did nothing during their patent time and actually only retooled their moulds because the new designs showed how worn out their current ones were. The problems were not really their fault as the box keycaps were designed to a specification for a set company and they performed as they were designed to do. Just because they went into the mainstream market was not a fault of Kailth themselves moreover the fault of the vendors that bought the switches and did not think to check the specifications before selling them. Of course this does not matter for those that have made their home in the bunker of cherry switches and never want anything else to succeed.

[Wodan]

That's Stockholm Syndrome at it's best. Innovation isn't an excuse for pathetic QC and selling products as "MX compatible" when they are really not is CLEARLY Kailhs fault. It's just shows how little they care about specifications, testing, quality control and actual compatibility. When you don't care about all of the above, it's very simple to be "innovative" and it's the innovation we largely get from Chinese companies who just throw new stuff into the market and then react to customer complaints. A reputable company instead is far less "innovative" because it takes them years to full develop a product and bring it to market. I would really love to see these kinds of products but the majority of the enthusiasts market is so desperate for a flashy new innovation every month, they rather choke on this half baked shit than appreciate a properly developed and tested new product.

I haven't even mentioned or praised Cherry in that situation and yet you act like bashing Cherry helps you making a point. But you seem to be completely unaware of the Cherry MX Low Profile switch ... they are innovating as well

[Anakey]

I am aware of the cherry low profile switch hence why i said they did not innovate during their patent period then again i guess the market for mechanical keyboards has really gained traction in the past 5 years or so and could not have been forseen at that time. I guess that it is more of a cultural thing in so much of today's just in time way of doing things and how quickly information spreads the more time spent on development the more chance a rival is going to make the market first with the same product.

[Wodan]

Well ... I didn't mean to sound so harsh, sorry for that. And I guess you could really call this a "cultural" thing.

If you encourage short innovation cycles and appreciate products just for being new or different, you will get inconsistent products no one really feels responsible for because by the time these products are really in the market, everyone is already paying attention to the next thing. A great example of this is the vast majority of Android based phones and the way they are maintained with patches and updates by their vendors.

That's not how I want to be treated as a customer. And I am having a hard time understanding how people can celebrate or defend such a behavior as "progress". I'd rather wait longer for a product that has been thoroughly tested, costs more and has less sex appeal but actually works perfectly the first time.

[Menuhin]

I like innovations and competitions:
Box switches
Optical switches
Hall-effect magnetic switches etc

Of course there is no law suit possible in the land of China, when it is about international customers vs Chinese companies or copyright infringers in China. But I can imagine the best customer support and compensation in the scenarios of cracking people's dear rare and collectible keycap sets:

• the whole GMK or SP SA key caps with the cracked caps be sent (or just photos) to be verified
• Money returned for the switches purchased with apologies
• Monetary compensation (not in coupon) for the damaged key cap sets (in a percentage or in whole of the ~ 150€ to 180€ price) OR free-of-charge keycap restoration repair service (using resin or acetone or whatever) with free tracked-shipping both ways
• Coupon for discount of buying new retooled switches that guarantee without the problem

Of course it is a bit advanced in terms of the non-existent concept of consumer rights in China.

[Chyros]

That's Stockholm Syndrome at it's best. Innovation isn't an excuse for pathetic QC and selling products as "MX compatible" when they are really not is CLEARLY Kailhs fault. It's just shows how little they care about specifications, testing, quality control and actual compatibility.

The larger stems were in response to customer demands. BOX switch stems were originally thinner. It has nothing to do with QC - in fact, their stem tolerances are SMALLER than Cherry's.

I agree that not all new things are genuine progress, but I really like they're at least thinking outside the box, something the keyboard world hasn't seen anywhere near enough of for the last 20 years due to Cherry's de facto monopoly. It wasn't until their complacent authority got challenged that companies started looking into other switch designs again. Sure, not all experiments work out well, but some do, and this can lead to great new developments. Besides, experimentation is an iterative process. I genuinely think the clickbar switches have added something that's pretty good to the market - and they've gotten better with every iteration IMO.

[Wodan]

... and they've gotten better with every iteration IMO.

Literally my point ... to me, that's an indicator for a shitty product and people still put up with that way of bringing products to the market.

Chinese company shells out half-baked "innovation", people suck that stuff up like it's a blessing, several shortcomings are found that should have been long taken care of by a proper development process, consumers are left with a flawed product but all the attention is already on the next "improved" iteration that will again show various flaws and failed fixes/improvements and this repeats until they are finally at an iteration where the product can actually be marketed.

In the process they created a huge base of various iterations of their product, leaving hundreds of customers with products that are pretty much worthless considering their latest iteration includes dozens of fixes ...

You pretty much never know if the next "iteration" of the product includes yet another "improvement" that backfires and creates compatibility issues or cracks your stems.

This might be funny from a reddit point of view where you just need this kind of drama and excitement to happen but from my perspective this behavior is totally inacceptable when it comes to an technical component like a keyboard switch. No surprise many of the large mechanical keyboard makers are still stuck with Cherry because they are still making the first iteration of their switches - technically irelevant changes like retooling for smoothness left aside.

[zrrion]

What's the alternative to iterative design then? Making revisions is how everything works. Computers, cars, every piece of technology will be worked on and updated. I don't get how getting better is a bad thing at all?

[ZedTheMan]

What's the alternative to iterative design then? Making revisions is how everything works. Computers, cars, every piece of technology will be worked on and updated. I don't get how getting better is a bad thing at all?

Seconding.

Wodan, why do you think the switch lineup you so defend is called Cherry MX? The "X" stands for 10. There were previous series and revisions within them, to fit different specs or to improve iteratively on previous designs. Sometimes this isn't for the better, either. Think of Cherry MY. Not an impressive switch at all in any case, however, they once changed from a more "solid" slider to one with an "X" pattern. Why? One cannot be sure. Maybe a customer requested that they be physically lighter, or perhaps it was cheaper to produce because it used less plastic. Nonetheless, this increased scratchiness of the keypress. (The vintage cherry MY I have tried, at least, were far smoother and had less binding than any of the modern varieties, they still had the unpleasant weighting and bottom out though) An adverse and potentially unforseen consequence of an "iterative" change.

Why do I say this? It is because Kailh being a Chinese company that produces new switch designs and improves them iteratively does not necessitate poor quality or invalidate the innovation or value offered by their product. Pitfalls during designs and experimentation is nothing new or unique, it is inherent to the process. While I do consider it a major blunder by Kailh to release the old spec BOX switches to the public without recognizing that the stem size may damage some MX caps, I do not consider this mistake due to them being a Chinese company or for using iterative design improvements for their new lineup. It is simply inherent to the process of innovation, though, stronger oversight may help.

[davkol]

That's a weak definition of "better". Good is obviously "better" than bad, but they're just creating a pile of garbage in the process of getting "good" results... and that pile of garbage, as well as the accompanying conspicuous consumption are incompatible with human survival. Which gets me to the more important point:

• are Kailh/Gateron/... internalizing environmental damage?
• are they paying their workers living wage?
• ...?

[ZedTheMan]

Which gets me to the more important point:

• are Kailh/Gateron/... internalizing environmental damage?
• are they paying their workers living wage?
• ...?

Now THAT, my friend, is an example of excellent questions, and a worthwhile topic to speak about. I would love to go on with you about that, but I feel like perhaps it would not be very on-topic for this topic and section of the forum. Maybe the environmental impact and workplace ethics of switch manufacturers can be a discussion for another thread.

[snacksthecat]

Not that I like cheap/crappy manufacturing but changes between production runs gives collectible items a more storied history. If you go in with the assumption that tomorrow's vintage keyboards are being made right now, wouldn't it be cool (at some point) to own some weird and rare piece of history? Like a keyboard switch that was only manufactured for a short period of time because it cracked a bunch keycaps? Okay well maybe that's a bad example but hopefully what I'm saying makes sense. It's analogous to being able to say, "I own a weird 1-off IBM keyboard that they later revised"?

[samuelcable]

That's Stockholm Syndrome at it's best. Innovation isn't an excuse for pathetic QC and selling products as "MX compatible" when they are really not is CLEARLY Kailhs fault. It's just shows how little they care about specifications, testing, quality control and actual compatibility.

The larger stems were in response to customer demands. BOX switch stems were originally thinner. It has nothing to do with QC - in fact, their stem tolerances are SMALLER than Cherry's.

I agree that not all new things are genuine progress, but I really like they're at least thinking outside the box, something the keyboard world hasn't seen anywhere near enough of for the last 20 years due to Cherry's de facto monopoly. It wasn't until their complacent authority got challenged that companies started looking into other switch designs again. Sure, not all experiments work out well, but some do, and this can lead to great new developments. Besides, experimentation is an iterative process. I genuinely think the clickbar switches have added something that's pretty good to the market - and they've gotten better with every iteration IMO.

I fail to see how that isn't due to bad qc. They made the stems bigger for a random gaming brand but decided to not test it enough to realize that they damage normal keycaps. That's bad quality control. That's an oversight. Kailh got so caught up in making the next overly tactile swirch that feels like someone punching your hands up for trying to type that they forgot they made changes to their base design for a shitty gaming brand

[Wodan]

What's the alternative to iterative design then? Making revisions is how everything works. Computers, cars, every piece of technology will be worked on and updated. I don't get how getting better is a bad thing at all?

You're talking about consumer electronics and other more "fashionable" items like cars and confuse a new "iteration" with a new model that replaces a previous model.

Keyboard switches on the other hand are technical components like a transistor or a 7-segment-display. The most common places to buy keyboard switches outside of specialized shops aimed at this community are electronical component wholesalers like arrow.com or farnells or Reichelt. These technical components aren't supposed to have frequent ITERATIONS or REVISIONS, companies build products around them that might be around for 10, 20 years and they want to rely on getting components for their products during that production time span - matching the exact same specs.

[Wodan]

Wodan, why do you think the switch lineup you so defend is called Cherry MX? The "X" stands for 10. There were previous series and revisions within them, to fit different specs or to improve iteratively on previous designs. Sometimes this isn't for the better, either. Think of Cherry MY. Not an impressive switch at all in any case, however, they once changed from a more "solid" slider to one with an "X" pattern. Why? One cannot be sure. Maybe a customer requested that they be physically lighter, or perhaps it was cheaper to produce because it used less plastic. Nonetheless, this increased scratchiness of the keypress. (The vintage cherry MY I have tried, at least, were far smoother and had less binding than any of the modern varieties, they still had the unpleasant weighting and bottom out though) An adverse and potentially unforseen consequence of an "iterative" change.

Why do I say this? It is because Kailh being a Chinese company that produces new switch designs and improves them iteratively does not necessitate poor quality or invalidate the innovation or value offered by their product. Pitfalls during designs and experimentation is nothing new or unique, it is inherent to the process. While I do consider it a major blunder by Kailh to release the old spec BOX switches to the public without recognizing that the stem size may damage some MX caps, I do not consider this mistake due to them being a Chinese company or for using iterative design improvements for their new lineup. It is simply inherent to the process of innovation, though, stronger oversight may help.

You're totally missing the point as well. Yes, Cherry has previously made a lot of other switches with different designs. Those were entirely different products though and might have ultimately LEAD to the MX design, the MX design can in no way be called an iteration of Cherry's previous products like you call the non-cracking Box switches an iteration of the stem-cracking Box switches. What happened back then was REAL innovation, coming up with new products that are an improvement over their previous products.

You can take ANY first generation Cherry MX keyboard and swap the switches for brand new retooled MX Blacks and everything will work perfectly fine. They have always made the MX switches as technical components and not as products you throw into the market, benefit from the feedback of the sorry buyers showing ZERO responsibility for delivering a shitty product and then sell the result as INNOVATION.

That's the equivalent of selling a Steam Early Access title at full price while still deep in Beta, take the feedback from the Early Access buyers to improve the game and then charge them again if they want to play the patched version.

And I don't care that Kailh is a Chinese company. But this just seems to be a very popular way to develop products by Chinese companies. Just looking through Amazon offerings from Chinese companies, it's full of "new, improved version" and "improved 2019 version"

[Wodan]

And Cherry MY was clearly a cost saving measure. I guess they looked at the IBM Model M and told themselves:

"Oh wow a membrane keyboard that is nearly impossible to service properly? I bet we can do worse!"

[samuelcable]

This is off topic from the current conversation but I kinda wish kailh and gateron weren't so cheaply made compared to cherry because some of their new designs (I personally like the concept behind halo switches) but they all fail short of cherry since they use cheap housings, horrible springs and bad qc. I feel bad that designers have to inevitably have these problems because it's not like cherry would accept custom switches the same way gateron and kailh do. But at the end of the day both are Chinese crap that kills the potential of all these interesting new concepts. This is why so many people Frankenstein their switches, because the cheap shitty ass housing of halo switches is terrible so people have to resort to panda housings to make their switches feel more worth using

[ZedTheMan]

What's the alternative to iterative design then? Making revisions is how everything works. Computers, cars, every piece of technology will be worked on and updated. I don't get how getting better is a bad thing at all?

You're talking about consumer electronics and other more "fashionable" items like cars and confuse a new "iteration" with a new model that replaces a previous model.

Keyboard switches on the other hand are technical components like a transistor or a 7-segment-display. The most common places to buy keyboard switches outside of specialized shops aimed at this community are electronical component wholesalers like arrow.com or farnells or Reichelt. These technical components aren't supposed to have frequent ITERATIONS or REVISIONS, companies build products around them that might be around for 10, 20 years and they want to rely on getting components for their products during that production time span - matching the exact same specs.

You know what? Fair enough. From that perspective, Kailh did have a failure of QC and oversight on their switch lineup. However, minor and sometimes not so minor iterations and revisions are made on these technical components all of the time. Consider the housing and spring differences between vintage MX Blacks over time. New logos, etc.
Many WYSE keyboards featured both "vintage" and "modern" MX blacks, and in some cases the difference is readily apparent.
Consider the Alps SKCM/SKCL lineup and the fuckton of only vaguely understood iterations even within the same switch type, just over the course of a few years. SKCM white, going from the earliest versions which are very similar to late SKCM Blues, including lubricant on the slider, and old, no logo housing out of an older material, to the late SKCM whites without slits or lubricant, and having a top Alps logo. These changes occurred in far less than a decade, and have a massive impact on switch feel and properties. They are all SKCM whites, though, and unless there is proof otherwise, they were marketed as the same product.

Again, this does not excuse Kailh for their fuck up in oversight, but to claim that incremental change and sometimes undocumented changes is not par for the course would be, in my view, disregarding historical evidence.

[ZedTheMan]

Wodan, why do you think the switch lineup you so defend is called Cherry MX? The "X" stands for 10. There were previous series and revisions within them, to fit different specs or to improve iteratively on previous designs. Sometimes this isn't for the better, either. Think of Cherry MY. Not an impressive switch at all in any case, however, they once changed from a more "solid" slider to one with an "X" pattern. Why? One cannot be sure. Maybe a customer requested that they be physically lighter, or perhaps it was cheaper to produce because it used less plastic. Nonetheless, this increased scratchiness of the keypress. (The vintage cherry MY I have tried, at least, were far smoother and had less binding than any of the modern varieties, they still had the unpleasant weighting and bottom out though) An adverse and potentially unforseen consequence of an "iterative" change.

Why do I say this? It is because Kailh being a Chinese company that produces new switch designs and improves them iteratively does not necessitate poor quality or invalidate the innovation or value offered by their product. Pitfalls during designs and experimentation is nothing new or unique, it is inherent to the process. While I do consider it a major blunder by Kailh to release the old spec BOX switches to the public without recognizing that the stem size may damage some MX caps, I do not consider this mistake due to them being a Chinese company or for using iterative design improvements for their new lineup. It is simply inherent to the process of innovation, though, stronger oversight may help.

You're totally missing the point as well. Yes, Cherry has previously made a lot of other switches with different designs. Those were entirely different products though and might have ultimately LEAD to the MX design, the MX design can in no way be called an iteration of Cherry's previous products like you call the non-cracking Box switches an iteration of the stem-cracking Box switches. What happened back then was REAL innovation, coming up with new products that are an improvement over their previous products.

You can take ANY first generation Cherry MX keyboard and swap the switches for brand new retooled MX Blacks and everything will work perfectly fine. They have always made the MX switches as technical components and not as products you throw into the market, benefit from the feedback of the sorry buyers showing ZERO responsibility for delivering a shitty product and then sell the result as INNOVATION.

That's the equivalent of selling a Steam Early Access title at full price while still deep in Beta, take the feedback from the Early Access buyers to improve the game and then charge them again if they want to play the patched version.

And I don't care that Kailh is a Chinese company. But this just seems to be a very popular way to develop products by Chinese companies. Just looking through Amazon offerings from Chinese companies, it's full of "new, improved version" and "improved 2019 version"

Ya know what? I'll give you this one, too. My argument was weak and my comparison flawed.

[Wodan]

God damnit I wish I could admit that every once in a while. I was doing well fighting a downhill battle but you‘re clearly the greater man.

[TuxKey]

just finished reading the conversation... typing this on my tada68 with kailh Pro Purple tactile switches..
that was after i tried the halo clears in the k-type.. When i needed a second board fast and was unsure what switch i wanted i just got a second pack of purple Kailh Pro's.. as it turned out i would rather try my hand in modding mx-clears to ergo-clears..
and i'm waiting on the second run of KBDfans T1 switches.. i would much rather just buy all the tactile zealios switches and see what i like.. but let's face it they are to expensive for me.. And modding switches is also something new even for someone that has bin in to mech keyboards as long as i now have.

What do i think about the whole conversation in regards to Quality Control but slow or almost no new development vs fast development with less or nearly no QC?..

i really like the point Wodan made about switches being a part like an electronic parts..
it's easy to get lost in the mechanical board world and loos sight of that..
i remember seeing a cherry factory tour and how impressed i was with all the testing that they did..
As a Unix turned Linux admin i can appreciate the philosophy of checking twice before committing..
But let's face it in the modern world of docker kubernetes, ansible it's all about fast,fast,fast....
i see that all around me.. and not it's not just because i'm starting my life as a 40yr old and feel like everything is moving so fast hahahhaha...

my final thoughts are..
There is a place for both companies. Also it's good to be challenged when your on top..
my mind drifts to intel vs amd. David & Goliath...
And if Kailh want's to be around for a bit more they are going to keep listing to this focal community..
Also customers don't always like to be the final R&D step for a premium.. hahahahha
i guess it's a matter of balance.. cutting costs vs all the $$ you loose if something fails.. and the negative brand name you get as a result..

easy it is not.. i'm kind of in the middle .. i like new players.. that give me a change to enter the game..
i would evaluate every situation when it comes up.. because even the top brands sometimes change management and think we can ride our fame let's make sum $$ on this one.. we can deal with the negatives later on....

[TuxKey]

Story time:
i recall my second mechanical keyboard i sold was the "Kul 87" with mx-clears. and that mine had several problems like pinging at that time i also had a Ducky edition who knows full size board with heavy grey that did not ping.. (still have that one somewhere) i opened both boards and even had two of the Wooting guys chime in that were visiting me. Conclusion was that Kul could fix a lot of this pinging by adding a screw in the middle like Ducky did screwing the plate to the pcb in the middle would change the tone resonance of the ping ... that could help and of course getting better stabs in the board..
That was my idea at that time.. the Wooting guys did not disagree and we both concluded that R&D was needed hahhaha...

after emailing the Kul people a couple of times.. they admitted that they simply could not add this screw as this would mean changing the production process. Here was a small company that could not even react to problems. while their company motto was something like "change the world of keyboards" providing new improved feel , being the best ever, after long development we have ..bla,bla,bla

Compare that with Khail hahah....So lot's of companies like to pretend to ride the slow and steady train of good innovation QC and so on,,, while all along they just like giving us word salads.. Just something to keep in mind..

[jani80k]

This guy from Cherry is stating that their Development Department is full of prototypes and innovations. I guess Cherry is in a different league than Kailh. They will just bring an innovation to the market if they will sell millions of units like the MX Silent Switches (2015), MX Silver Speed Switches (2016) and MX Low Profile (2018). Sadly, the main market for mechanical keyboards today is not the commercial customer, it is the gaming industry. That is why we will only see products in this area by Cherry. Kailh on the other hand seems to operate on a smaller scale and seems to have identified keyboard enthusiasts as one of their target groups.
Cherry's main customers are Corsair, Asus and other multi million dollar companies worldwide. Obviously they will have a much more professional product lifecycle management and a lot of testing with their customers (Corsair for example) before one keyboard with a new switch type even hits the market.
On the other hand, Kailh01 is here on the forums, talking to us and asking for our opinion. I doubt you will see that from a Cherry representative. I would be surprised if they even cared about our opinion because we are not relevant to them.
To sum it up I will give an example: as long as the average joe who buys a gaming keyboard is fine with the plasticy click of an MX Blue switch, maybe because he does not know better, Cherry will keep producing millions of it as their main clicky switch. If there was a large demand (millions of dollars) for a better clicky switch (be it with clickbar technology or anything else), of course, they would be most capable of developing it, prototyping it and bringing it to the market without any quality issues like keycaps cracking stems. There just is no demand by the customers which are relevant to them.
For a keyboard nerd, Kailh and Cherry are directly comparable but in real life, in the global economy, they are not even direct competitors.
Kaihua's latest new products are clearly geared towards enthusiasts whereas Cherry's are geared towards the average gamer who thinks mechanical keyboards are too loud (Silent Switch), they acuate too slowly (Speed Switch) or the should feel more like a laptop keyboard (Low Profile Switch).
So both are being innovative towards their main customers / target groups.

[Elrick]

To sum it up I will give an example: as long as the average joe who buys a gaming keyboard is fine with the plasticy click of an MX Blue switch, maybe because he does not know better, Cherry will keep producing millions of it as their main clicky switch.

The Average "Joe" is the quintessential Cherry MX simpleton, who doesn't care much about anything. That is why Cherry makes heaps of money from those ignorant fools, every day of the week.

You see that is how HUGE companies make profit from the vast number of ignorant halfwit's on this Planet.

[Findecanor]

On the other hand, Kailh01 is here on the forums, talking to us and asking for our opinion. I doubt you will see that from a Cherry representative. I would be surprised if they even cared about our opinion because we are not relevant to them.

We have had a rep from Cherry UK here. (And Ducky, Cooler Master and others)
But they are all sales-people, of course. As is Kailh's rep. They are on many forums and spend only a tiny fraction of their time on each one. Don't kid yourself! When they create engagement, they do it to raise awareness of their employer, not to get us involved. I doubt that any of our opinions or ideas ever reach any R/D department through them.

But it is nice to get news about new products, before we read it in the press. (and I have even got some swag and spare parts from these reps)

For a keyboard nerd, Kailh and Cherry are directly comparable but in real life, in the global economy, they are not even direct competitors.

For a keyboard nerd, Kailh and Cherry are manufacturers of keyboard switches, but in a larger scale that is only part of what they do. Cherry and Kailh do compete with many other switch/sensor/encoder products as well ... and against e.g. Omron, Alps, SMK and against other brands that we never heard of here.
Five years ago, Cherry had been unprepared for the demand for key switches, and could not keep up with orders: Cooler Master for instance, halted production of some products for months because they couldn't produce at full capacity. Razer, which was (and is large notwithstanding) chose to switch from Cherry to Kailh as their supplier.
However, our discussion is moot if we don't have actual sales numbers to compare.